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Comment by Fawful

One of these days I hope they make shield spikes even remotely viable. ~100 damage ONLY on blocks is just disgustingly low damage at the level 80-85 range.

Comment by Wetop

Maybe at the end-game content yes. But this on when boosting lowbies / farming lowbie instances for any reason = win.

Comment by Vipral

As a Pally, with my massively high block chance, a shield spike boosts my threat a massive amount. You may consider this to be a small amount, but if you consider block chance, and how often you may/can block during a boss fight, you'll see that the shield spike can deal a large amount of threat during an encounter. I have noticed a large increase in threat when I have a shield with a spike on over a shield without one, and my shield with the spike on it is my lower level shield.

I tend to block once every other hit, but for sake of arguement, let's make it once every 3 hits, and average the dmg done to 100 dmg. Now let's say you have A boss mob on you, and he has 3 adds, which you, as the tank, must hold threat on, as well as the boss. Now, this shouldn't be difficult at all, as threat isn't so hard to hold, BUT let's say you have that one massively high dps who is hitting the target at the end of your threat list.

4 Mobs hit you, and let's say all at the same speed of 2 seconds. You are sure to block at least one of them per swing with your spike. Now let's raise this encounter to 60 seconds. You should have blocked at minimum 40 times. This is at minimum here, 4000 damage. Now, this might not seem like a lot, but now consider that you're a tank. Your threat gen is much higher than others for each action, or reaction, you have. Let's consider the multiplicative amount to be 2x (though it's larger). You now have 8000 extra damage worth of threat across those 4 mobs. Let's consider you are doing a large amount of AOE threat, but you have a high DPS hitting, as stated before, the last mob in your threat rotation list.

This DPS is slowly rising on the threat list. Now let's assume He is outthreating your AOE by 20%.

We'll give our AOE threat the amount of 10k per second. this means the DPS is doing 12k per second. Now take that threat damage of 8000, and divide it amongst the four mobs. Let's assume it's evenly split, this makes 2k threat over a minute for one mob. This is equal to about 34 TPS. Doesn't sound like much, does it?

Here's where the large numbers actually come into play.

So far, we have assumed quite a low block rate, but the fact is, if you have 4 mobs swinging at you, you have a much higher chance of blocking 3 out of the 4 mobs per swing. The reason of this is your combat table. Once dodge and parry are off the table, a high block chance becomes very viable for causing the block to come through instead of a completely bypassed hit.

We'll assume, again for arguement's sake, that only 2 get blocked per swing. Let us, however, also assume you block 3, on half those swings. This adds 15000 threat per 60 seconds, or 250 TPS. Now, this is all, once again, assuming our threat multiplicative effects are only double, which they are not. You now have 10,250 TPS. the DPS still has 12,000 TPS. Here's the kicker though. that 250 TPS adds up exponentially. Remember that all melee DPS need to do 10% threat over the tank to pull agro, and ranged have to do 30% over.

Adding all this math up, you end up having it to be where, by the time you get to said mob on your threat rotation, instead of the DPS being 12% over threat, thus pulling agro, he is 8% over threat. You now have ample time to threat that target, and make sure you have enough threat so that you won't be pulled off before heading back to the next target in your lineup. You have just saved one of your reckless melee DPS from possibly getting hit by something from th add that you'd rather he not get hit by. This can, plausibly, save a group from a wipe.

Ranged DPS, obviously, have more leeway, but they also tend to have more threat than Melee DPS as well.

Basically, shield spikes are more useful than they look, so don't knock what they can do before you've actually gone through the trouble of running the test.

Now, even after all this, I will say Protection is a better shield enchant than a Spike. Stamina, Defense, Blocking, or anything else, however, is worse.

Comment by Shanto94

Now thats a fail statement.You dont block more per hit (which I will refeer to as b/h from now on)Your b/h wont change statisticly, no matter whatSo, lets put in a somewhat decent geared tank with 90mastery food and mastery stack, and say 55% block, the boss have 3 adds (and himself) where all got a swing timer of 0.5 hits per second (or 2 sec between each hit)Here is the info:Average damage dealt per block = 111.5block chance = 55%Attack Speed = 0.5 Hits per sec (Swing Timer = 2sec)

So, lets say that you deal 10k TPS to the lowest threat target (he dont get hit by your avenger's shield)The DPSer do 12k AoE DPSThe one mob (Because its COMPLETELY unaffected by the actions of the other mobs) is attacking you once every 2 sec, with a 55% chance of getting blocked, when it get blocked you deal 111.5First you need to divide the 111.5 by 2 (We are out after info per second, not per 2nd second)55.75Now you do 55.75 * 0.55 (Your block chance, because thats how often he will ge blocked)30.6625Thats the added DPS per target trough this.Now, righteous fury means you need to multiply the damage with 3 to get to the threat (Same go for deffensive stance, bear form and blood pressence afaik)30.6625*3=91.987510000 + 91.9875 = 10091.9875And if the AoEer deal 12k TPS to your lowest threat target and is melee then you just multiply your new number by 10%10091.9875 * 1.10 = 11101,18625And he still overaggro.Now if it was a ranged he would need 13k TPS to overaggro 10k TPS to begin with, so thats completely useless, but yea, if a ranged deal EXACTLY 30% more threat than you, this would keep aggro off him. If not, nope not worth it.One more thing, if you go from 55.75 with 100% block, 0% dodge, 0% parry, then you will have 55.75*3 = 167.25Where the &*!@ can you get 250 increased threat?The total increase to all the mobs? Why is that interesting, mobs have individual threat, but yea, if threat was splitted this would help, but he is AoEing and your threat to your primary target would then been enugh. So still useless numbers.This enchant is at best giving 167.25 increased threat (with 100% block) so definetly not worth it.One more thing, lets say you are an exceptionelly well geared tank (and threat isnt an issue) on Halfuc, taking the whelps, thats 8 adds, 70% block (like BiS geared or w/e)Now they do have a swing timer of 255.75*0.7= 39.02539.025*8=312.2312 DPS vs. 8 adds, still as good as nothing.